Cabinet

(1,154 words)

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1. Holy Roman Empire

The word cabinet (German Kabinett), derived from the French cabinet, originally meant a small and intimate room. From the 17th century in the German-speaking world, it began to be used in place ofKammer (“chamber”) to denote the work and council chamber of the ruler and, in a figurative sense, the apparatus of supreme executive power. Zedler’s Universal-Lexikon, for instance, defined Cabinet as the sanctuarium principis (“sanctum of the prince”), which “great lords have set …